For some reason, white tulips were Dema’s favourite flower. It wasn’t something she’d ever said out loud, but the reactions these flowers provoked made it obvious. Whenever Theora put a white tulip into a bouquet or just gave one to Dema, she would start fidgeting with a bright grin on her face.

However, it seemed like Theora wasn’t the only one who had picked up on that little detail, because when they returned from the moon, she found wild tulips sprouting under Treeka’s wide canopy in dozens. The sight made Dema incredibly happy. She kept mentioning it for days.

Communicating through flowers, baking bread, making tea — many of the things Theora loved doing connected in some way to plants. She’d been wanting to cultivate her own darkness daffodils for ages, and seeing Dema so happy at the sight of tulips now gave her yet another reason to finally try out gardening.

Thus, Theora spent most of the first two weeks after their return tending to plants, a little ways away from the house — because admittedly, she was feeling somewhat shy about it. All she did was to ask Dema to form some makeshift pots.

Theora found a hill with a cave entrance, and put a darkness daffodil sapling inside where it wouldn’t disturb anything. She used the topside of the hill — plenty of light and a rocky surface — to grow other plants in Dema’s pots. She attempted to cultivate a few strands of rye first. If she could grow rye she could bake bread from it. She also found some flowers in the meadows to replant.

This was fun, but admittedly, Theora was bad at it. How was she supposed to know if she was overwatering or underwatering the plants, or if they had enough or too little sunlight? All she did know was that they were struggling.

Theora could ask Treeka for advice.

But she was also doing this, in part, for Treeka. Because there was an additional reason for her to learn gardening now. To no longer postpone it. It would let her make a certain dangerous suggestion, one so outrageous Theora wanted to have a success to show for her effort first.

On the fifteenth day, after Theora had finished sulking over a tulip withering, Isobel came to join her at the hill, unannounced.

“Ah, there you are!” Iso let out, smiling. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise, because Isobel could have checked for Theora’s location on the map. Apparently she hadn’t done so. She clacked up the slope — her eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight of about two dozen planters in the sun. She smiled, but made no comment. Instead, she watched Theora pour some soil from a bucket. “Need help?”

“Ah,” Theora let out, wiping a few beads of sun-induced sweat from her forehead. She rubbed soil off her hands into her white linen gown. “I’m, uh. I was thinking maybe they need better soil. So I fetched some from beneath our compost.” She could have done so earlier but erroneously thought the plants’ native soil was better. “You could help me repot them.”

Isobel nodded and got to work, gently plucking a juniper from its planter and weaving her fingers through the roots to loosen the soil; she appeared to have experience with that.

Theora got distracted at watching her for a while, trying to learn from every single movement. Soon, she was able to copy it. Then she realised Isobel had probably not come to teach her how to repot plants. “Did you want to tell me something?”

“Ah.” Isobel sat down on the ground, making a pile of soil in front of her while holding a plant. “The thing is… remember what I said about trains?”

“You mean, that we should take the train to the next Fragment?”

“Yeah, that!” Isobel gave a happy nod. “Well, I’m still not sure what that means, and IO isn’t being very helpful… Just keeps talking about ‘Campanella’ or something. I am planning on asking a Summoner from the Observatory and visiting some libraries on the way, but that would require time. So I wanted to ask if you needed me for anything, anytime soon?”

“I could use my portal again,” Theora offered, even though the thought of it gave her shivers.

“Let’s do that if we have to, but there’s no rush for now, right?”

Perhaps there wasn’t. “Well… I can’t think of anything that would require your presence for now,” Theora murmured in thought. “Are you going alone?”

“Yeah! I managed to convince Bell to let me.”

Theora let out a soft chuckle. “In that case, I think you’re free to go. I’ll help take care of things while you’re gone.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

A few days later, right before Isobel would set off on her journey, Theora conveniently found everyone in the central yard around their house. She had a little pot in her hand with a sapling in it that hadn’t died — it really wasn’t a lot but she couldn’t wait much longer either. Bell was helping Iso collect some last-minute items while Dema and Treeka were playing a game using Theora’s deck of cards.

Theora took a deep breath. This was perhaps the best chance she would get.

“So, um,” she started, and hiccuped. Dema’s eyes found hers. “I’ve been thinking about Treeka.”

Treeka’s head swivelled over; she’d been busy thinking about what card to play. “About me?”

Bell and Iso stopped their work too and came a few steps closer.

Theora nodded with a little shrug. “Because Isobel is about to depart to do research on the—”

“The train!” Iso supplied. “Yeah. I am.”

“And she’s doing that because,” Theora continued, “we’re planning on taking this train to the next Fragment? Maybe? If the research leads anywhere. And that would mean we’d have to leave Treeka behind again.”

Treeka’s expression soured, and she looked away.

“Unless… we take her with us,” Theora murmured.

That got Treeka’s attention right back, eyebrows shooting up. She seemed vaguely intrigued but mostly suspicious. “I’m a tree, in case you hadn’t noticed. Can’t move.”

“Yeah…” Theora sighed. “That’s the problem we would need to address. So… I was thinking… what if we do another soul transfer? You make a fruit, we grow a new tree from it, then we take you along in a pot?”

“I’ll be a sapling.” Treeka looked at the others as if to judge their reactions. “Can’t talk when I’m a sapling.”

“But…” Theora wanted to do her best to make her proposal sound as reasonable as possible, because it surely would not speak for itself. She fidgeted with the little pot in her hands while stumbling over her words. “What if we… keep you small as you get older…? Like, have you heard of things like ‘bonsai trees’? We’d just need to figure out how that works, wait until you wake back up from sleep, and then we could take you with us…?”

Treeka took a moment to let her eyes wander up and down Theora. “You’re suggesting you cut me down and then keep cutting pieces off of me so I stay small?”

That… was the part about the proposal Theora felt wasn’t able to speak for itself. “I sort of am,” she admitted. But that way they could take her along anywhere a pot could go.

Then, in a very small voice, Treeka said, “I like it.”

“Sounds fun,” Isobel mused. “Just need to wait until Bell has a high enough rank to buy the transfer Skill again.” Isobel jumped down a root with a few clicks and clacks. “Depending on what we find out with the train stuff, I might stay behind again next time you fetch a Fragment. But it would be nice if she got to go on an adventure with y’all…”

“Wait—” Dema scratched her head. “Why’re you gonna stay behind again?”

Isobel gave a lopsided smile. “Because I’ll do some more testing on the System. I want to get my Legendary Skill finished before Time arrives.”

That statement left a stunned silence. Dema even stopped bobbing around in place.

“Yeah!” Iso said after her pause for effect. “My goal is to figure out how the System truly works. A common Skill probably won’t be enough to figure that out. So… if you’re all fine taking a little train ride, that sounds good to me. I’ll go hermit-mode for a while.” In a silly demonstration, she rolled herself into a pill. Dema gave Iso a gentle pat on the carapace segment that covered her shoulder.

“So, uhm,” Bell asked, “just to be clear, that means we’re going to chop down Treeka?”

Treeka tilted her head. “You don’t want me to join?”

Bell winced. “No it’s just — the process sounds… gruesome. It kind of makes me feel bad?”

“Okay, but there’s no way I will stay here and then you three come back with even more inside jokes,” Treeka grumbled. “I barely got to know Theora so far, let me have her too, for a bit. I’m tired of everyone just talking about her. I just want to finish the current set of garments first.” She gestured toward a fruit engulfed in fuzzy fibres hanging on one of her branches.

That piece of information slotted very suddenly into Theora’s brain, and she let out a surprised noise in response. That wasn’t a flame tree fruit at all… so Treeka had probably made it up with a Skill. “Wait… you make the clothes yourself? Like my nightgown? You grow the materials?”

Treeka tilted her head, stopping in her motion. “I thought you knew?”

Theora turned beet red within seconds. She had no idea. She’d been sleeping inside — surrounded by — Treeka this entire time? No wonder Treeka had gotten embarrassed back then. “And—” Theora started, voice slightly brittle, “you’re going to make more?”

Treeka nodded with a little smile. “I want to make sturdy clothes for all of you, because you tend to get into rough spots. Bell and Iso have been using parts of her own bodies as clothing” — she gestured to Bell’s white, thin dress which grew from her skin, and then to Isobel’s moss — “because conventional clothing doesn’t work well for them. But I thought I could use Skills to grow clothes that are more resilient.”

“That’s so cool!” Dema said. “You never mentioned it!”

Treeka looked to the side. “Well, yes. I was a little upset with y’all when you decided to leave me again so soon after Theora returned. So I did it in secret.” Her face lit up a little. “But if you’re taking me with you next time? Kind of makes me feel a lot better, sort of.”

“Could I hug you, please?” Theora asked — and when Treeka gave a shy nod, she first embraced her spirit body and then also put her arms around the large trunk, for good measure.

“Alright, then!” Dema said, jumping up. “Chopping time!”

“Wait, what?” Bell let out in a panic. “I don’t even have the thing yet—”

“Chopping time,” Treeka repeated with a giggle.